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The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
Andrew Sean Greer
Ecco
July 2013
On Sale: June 25, 2013
304 pages ISBN: 0062213784 EAN: 9780062213785 Kindle: B009NF6ZMU Hardcover / e-Book
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Historical | Fiction
The story begins in 1985. After the death of her beloved
twin brother, Felix, and the abandonment of her long-time
lover, Nathan, Greta Wells sinks into an enveloping state of
depression. At the suggestion of her doctor, and under the
watchful eye of her flamboyant Aunt Ruth, Greta tries a
radical therapy. But the treatment has unexpected effects,
and Greta suddenly finds herself transported to the lives
she might have lived had she been born in a different time. During the course of her treatment, Greta repeatedly travels
to 1918, 1941, and back to 1985. In these other worlds, she
finds her brother, alive and well, though fearfully masking
his true personality to escape the ostracism of an earlier
age’s prejudices. Here, too, she finds her former lover,
Nathan, now her devoted husband. Will he be unfaithful to
her in this life, as well? And if he is, will she behave
exactly as she did before? In 1941 she is a devoted mother;
in 1918 she is a bohemian adulteress. As the cycle of treatments nears its end, tension mounts
over the actions each Greta takes in her “other” lives.
Married Greta has no intention of being abandoned by Nathan
in 1985. Amorous Greta refuses to give up her young lover,
Leo, for the stuffy respectability of being a doctor’s wife
in WWII. And what will happen once the Gretas stumble upon
the secret for getting off this time-travel merry-go-round?
Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each
extracts a different price. Who will choose to remain in
which life?
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